It would seem important then that every candidate court their voters and try to persuade us which way to go. They should be listening to us, their prospective constituents, about our concerns and what matters most to Griffith. Then we can make an informed decision about who we support, whose values most closely mirror our own and send them to Canberra on our behalf.

This is the way representative government is supposed to work. The Member for Farrer should be representative of the people of Farrer and give them a voice in the capitol.

In order to work out who to vote for, you need to consider the values and beliefs of the candidates. Now, unless you’re one of the seven people running, you’ll probably have to compromise on your beliefs in order to pick a person who’s closest to you.

With this week being ‘Refugee Week’ I can’t help but think of the children we still have in detention. This will be one of the core issues I take into the polling booth on July 2.

I know it’s important to discourage people from making risky ocean voyages to seek safety, but when I read the story of Zahid Hussein I couldn’t help but wonder what I would do in that situation. Faced with an impossible choice, is it any wonder people bundle their children onto rickety little fishing boats and strike out across the sea?

At what point did we as a country decide to allow children to be locked up to send a message? Worse still, both sides of politics remain committed to offshore refugee processing, but they’d rather not talk about it.

This is no longer a ‘left versus right’ debate when both of the big guys seem intent on keeping poor people, including children, behind bars on an island so we can skirt around humanitarian laws. It is simply an arrangement of convenience.

Each year, per person, we spend about $400,000 keeping people in offshore detention. In 2014, it cost taxpayers more than $3 billion. Why? Why do we care more about poor boat people than the 60,000 illegal immigrants who arrive by plane? All our forefathers turned up by boat and helped build something here. Why can’t they?

-STEPHEN MUDD